Pat Higgins2015-08-02T14:51:55-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=pat-higginsCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Pat HigginsGood old fashioned elbow grease.Don't Feed the Professional A**holestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.71589682015-04-28T19:00:00-04:002015-06-28T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
Whether we pay them by the mouse-click, pay them by the purchase of a newspaper or pay them by the phone votes on a TV talent show, we pay them nonetheless. In return for this payment, they perform for us. Whether they're providing us with loathsome viewpoints, shouting at unknown singing hopefuls or just misrepresenting evidence in order to demonise a section of the population, paid assholes seem to be everywhere.

Very different to accidental assholes, (the kind of people who post a misguided tweet or bad-taste joke and see their entire lives destroyed by the online reaction, as detailed in Jon Ronson's awesome book So You've Been Publicly Shamed), the professional asshole depends on the online outrage machine for their very existence.

The defence of this cultural phenomenon usually runs along the lines of "They're only saying it to get a reaction", "They're saying what others are already thinking" or even "At least they've got people talking about the issue". It's the last of these that I imagine most pro-holes (hey, that's got a nice ring to it. I think I'll use it for the rest of the article) use when rocking themselves to sleep at night; the idea that by vocalising an idea at the absolute extreme of the spectrum (however foul) they have opened up genuine dialogue about all the other points along the scale.

I don't buy this.

I'm not going to mention any of them by name in this article, partly because I don't want any of them to inadvertently get paid for clicks, partly because I don't want to raise any profiles and thus inadvertently feed the beast but, most of all, because there's a tiny part of me that believes that mentioning them by name will make the bastards appear behind me like the goddamn Candyman and, frankly, I don't need the sleepless nights.

It's always a telling moment when a pro-hole oversteps the mark, given that overstepping the mark is the only reason for their existence and is the thing they get paid for. Sometimes there's a bruised statement in response to the outcry, alluding darkly to the forces that were driving them to say ever-more offensive things (these forces, in this country at least, tend to have pictures of the queen on them) and an implication that the public doesn't understand the whole story. Sometimes there's contrition, often swiftly retracted when the pro-hole realises that, if they leave their career of being loathsome behind them, they don't really have a hell of a lot to fall back on. Most often, there's misdirection and a non-apology, and the pro-hole simply brazens it out. They wait for the quote that went 'too far' to become lost in the sea of all the other horrible stuff they've said.

Oddly enough, I have a degree of sympathy for them. As I mentioned, they don't have a great deal of transferrable skills, and the retired pro-hole doesn't really have much to look forward to except hoping that, by the time a few years have passed, the public will have forgotten that they were ever 'genuinely' offensive rather than 'entertainingly' offensive. If that day comes, the ex pro-hole will be ready to get booed as an onstage baddie when pantomime season rolls around. That's pretty much the best case scenario, and probably scant consolation for all the mysterious viruses contracted from decades of people spitting in their coffee.

So, if they get their comeuppance in the end, can't we just accept it as a new cultural role?

Well, not really.

The idea of confirmation bias tells us that the world is too full of stuff for us to be able to take in all of it, so we tend to notice things that confirm our beliefs rather than things that challenge them. Thus, the longer we hold a belief for, the more we will build up a bank of evidence saying that it's true. If you believe that you're a crappy footballer, you'll remember every miskick and fumble whilst dismissing every goal as a fluke. If you believe you're a crappy footballer for long enough, your memory will have compiled such a huge bank of evidence to support that idea (logging every error whilst discarding all the times you showed promise) that you'll no longer believe that the subject is even up for debate.

In other words, from a subjective viewpoint, the world actually becomes the place we expect it to be. The pro-holes aren't planting the seeds for debate, they're planting the seeds for more people to become pro-holes. They're normalising hatred and pushed humanity one step closer to being the least empathic, most unpleasant, meanest possible version of itself. Give them half a chance, and they multiply like gremlins and, before we know it, hatred looks like a viable career path for an entire generation.

So, what's to be done? Well, if you come into contact with a pro-hole, there are some rules you've gotta follow.

Don't feed them with outrage.

Don't feed them with your newspaper spare change.

And lastly, and most importantly, no matter how much they cry, no matter how much they beg... No matter how much it looks like the right thing to do...

Never, never feed them with your mouse-click.

Right, I'm off to find out whether I'm actually any good at football after all.]]>The Cast of 'Twin Peaks' Restore My Faith in Humanitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.70710402015-04-16T19:00:00-04:002015-06-16T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/Twin Peaks to TV was always going to feel a bit too good to be true.

It wasn't just that a show was coming back after 25 years, because quite a few shows do that nowadays. We live in an age where TV and film studios are risk averse and extremely aware of brand recognition as a way of guaranteeing some kind of a built-in audience, so pretty much any recognisable name from the past stands a chance of coming back in some form or another. Why, just this morning I watched the trailer for a new TV series based on Scream, which had the immediate effect of making me wish that I'd spent that two minutes doing absolutely anything other than watching the trailer for a new TV series based on Scream. Repeatedly stubbing my toe against a splintered wooden block, perhaps, or tripping and falling into a vat of human waste.

But I digress.

It wasn't the Twin Peaks comeback that was a surprise, necessarily; it was the little details. The fact that the initial show had actually set itself up to be continued 25 years later was a pretty major source of joy for me, certainly, but the really big one was the return of all the key players. The prospect was dangled that we were going to see a true continuation, with the full participation of all the people who had crafted the show in the first place.

And then, of course, the law of entropy kicked in, and things fell apart.

When David Lynch tweeted that negotiations had broken down and that he was walking away, I had a load of questions. The first thirty-seven of these questions all consisted of the word 'WHY?' screamed heavenwards at an uncaring God as I stood shirtless in a rainstorm. The thirty-eighth question was 'Well, what now?'

Would the remaining cast and crew remain attached to a Lynch-less product?

This question was addressed in rather lovely style with the release of a viral video last week, in which cast members tried to express how unsatisfactory the idea of Twin Peaks without David Lynch would be.

A couple of things struck me about this. Not just how great it was to see so many of the cast again, or how nice it was to see them in such an informal and off-the-cuff style, but also what a brilliant display of loyalty it was. Ultimately, the cast of Twin Peaks would have been fully aware that such a strong show of support for someone who had apparently left the project could potentially jeopardise their own place on it but they did it regardless. In an industry where the lure of professional progress can sometimes overpower personal loyalties, this struck me as a quietly awesome show of solidarity. The ever-engaging Sherilyn Fenn went one further and explicitly stated on the cast-run Peaks Facebook page that she wouldn't appear in a Lynchless Peaks anyway - posting "if DKL is NOT directing than Showtime can RECAST AUDREY HORNE... or say she DIED in the explosion".

Just once, it'd be nice for loyalty and solidarity to make something awesome happen (and, as a die-hard fan of even the original show's wobbliest moments, I truly believe that a Lynch/Frost led continuation/conclusion could genuinely be just that).

Just once, it'd be nice for 'too good to be true' to be true after all.]]>Everyone's a Critic, but Critics Aren't Everyonetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.69852102015-04-01T11:28:55-04:002015-06-01T05:59:01-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
It was a collection of tiny film reviews I wrote when I was about 12. Carefully hand-written with each film's year of production and a mark out of five (plus a special 'Bulls Eye' option for movies that I thought were classics), it was, naturally, agonising to read.

The back page of the file contained a little note written in the opening weeks of 1988, explaining my decision to stop writing the reviews because I kept changing my mind about which films were good and bad (hopefully I had The Empire Strikes Back very much in mind when I wrote this). I can remember worrying about how much influence I had felt that Halliwell's Film Guide was having on my ratings. In those pre-www days, I would turn to the book to identify a film's year of origin but would then often find it difficult to describe a film as fantastic if the book had said it was basically crap.

Considering that Halliwell himself seemed to enjoy very little from the 70s onwards, that described most of the movies I watched.

I was clearly never cut out to be a critic, but I'm fascinated by the process even to this day. In particular, I'm interested in what makes their opinions 'different' from those public ones to which the internet has given a voice.

Take, for example, a little movie called The Babadook. It's currently rocking 98% 'fresh' on Rotten Tomatoes (taken from the opinions of critics), as opposed to a 6.9 rating from the public on IMDB. There's clearly a big disconnect going on here. In this case, I'm firmly with the critics; I think The Babadook is almost certainly the finest horror movie of the decade, but clearly a lot of everyday punters disagree.

On the other hand, I took my kids to see a flick called Home the other week. I had absolutely no expectations, yet found it surprisingly appealing and money well spent. It's sporting 6.8 over on IMDB (almost exactly the same as The Babadook), yet has a very different story on Rotten Tomatoes. A meagre 47% fresh from the critics.

So, two movies that the general public considers to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of quality, yet the critics have very different opinions on. Of course, the numbers in this case could be extremely deceptive (my gut tells me that The Babadook has got a whole lot of 10/10 votes and a whole lot of 1/10 votes, whereas Home is likely to have a hell of a lot of 6/10 and 7/10 and not much at the two ends of the spectrum), but it's pretty clear that critics and regular customers have got some major differences of opinion going on.

I wonder if genre familiarity is the biggest factor here. I've seen a hell of a lot of horror movies. Really, really a hell of a lot of them. One of the main joys of The Babadook for me was that it didn't follow that tried, tested, dull-as-hell path that 90% of mainstream horrors feel duty-bound to follow. I liked it because it delivered the unexpected (and because it was true to its actual theme, rather than just ploughing through genre conventions). On the flipside, if I was a 17 year-old who'd only seen a few dozen horrors (or even a few hundred, rather than a few thousand), might that divergence from expectation have confounded my enjoyment? Might I have felt betrayed in some way? Felt that the movie wasn't what I signed up for?

Kids' movies, of course, I'm a lot less jaded about. Funnily enough, I've only returned to them as a form of entertainment since having kids of my own, and having taken a break of a couple of decades might just mean that I've gotten a whole lot less demanding. Perhaps if I'd sat through a few thousand Home-alikes beforehand, I'd have been a lot less entertained.

Professional critics, of course, have to watch pretty much everything that gets released. It's their blessing and their curse. The experience that shapes their perception and makes them different.

The experience that makes them right about The Babadook and wrong about Home.

Right, I'm off to watch Police Academy 2 again to give it another chance. Maybe my adult self is missing something.

Or maybe my 12 year-old self just really, really liked that bit where the slobby guy eats a chocolate bar covered in ants.]]>Filmmaking Has Got Too Easy. Maybe We Need More Obstacles.tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.67196842015-02-20T08:44:05-05:002015-04-22T05:59:01-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/TrashHouse.

I edited it on a home PC with a 20GB hard drive, (which at the time was considered a ridiculously huge amount of storage space and cost me a whole load of money). Doing that was stupidly difficult and inefficient as the technology really wasn't in place yet. Every day my set-up would crash and lose huge amounts of work. I couldn't back up as much as I wanted to, because the machine I was cutting on was literally full.

As a result of these difficulties, hardly any independent films were being made at my tiny budget level. Due to a lack of competition, my daft little first feature ended up getting some pretty damn good distribution in the UK. It was on the shelves in every high street and reviewed in proper magazines alongside films that cost over 1000 times its budget.

The average film student watching the movie now would be dumbstruck at how amateurish certain elements of it look. From a technical point of view it's all over the place. The picture grade is inconsistent, the compositing is shocking and there are CGI elements that look laughably poor in 2015 (and didn't exactly look brilliant by 2004). It doesn't look like the commercially released indies of 2015, which are within spitting distance of Hollywood in terms of visual qualities and technical expertise. But, in 2004, it didn't really have to. The fact that it existed at all was enough to at least get a few potential distributors to watch it, and thankfully one of them really liked it.

I still reckon there are some good things about TrashHouse, which ultimately meant that I got the chance to keep making films. It's got a pretty decent script and some interesting ideas along the way. If people go to it looking for a mainstream horror flick with high production values they'll be bitterly disappointed, but if they go to it looking for a lo-fi oddity they'll hopefully still find stuff to enjoy.

It's a product of the obstacles I had to climb to get it made, and it only found its way onto the shelves of major stores because I had to climb those obstacles.

At the risk of sounding all "Eeh, in my day it were all fields around here", which is never a good look, (especially when the day you're talking about was only about a decade ago), I think what the new generation of filmmakers need more than anything else is some obstacles. Otherwise every brave new voice is competing with EVERYONE who can pick up a camera and produce something that looks perfectly great without really putting in any particular effort. The democratisation of film production comes at a price; if you give everyone a voice, you fast discover that an awful lot of people have got fuck all to say but they keep shouting anyway. The voices that would otherwise have immediately stood out get swept away on the tide of mediocrity. Bark bark bark.

At the time that Clerks hit, Kevin Smith was an original voice. The reason that people heard him was because (can you guess?) his movie had to climb huge obstacles to get made. Shooting a movie wasn't something that guys who worked in convenience stores could easily do, and Smith's determination just to get the bastard made meant that at least a couple of people watched his flick out of curiosity. The fact that it existed meant that at least a few sets of eyes would be interested in watching it. As it happened, that was enough to set the ball in motion and make sure that the original voice got heard.

Nowadays, there are a hell of a lot of guys who work in convenience stores who are making movies. Some of those movies look close to professional. Very few of them are an original voice waiting to be heard, and my worry is that the ones that are have no way whatsoever of standing out. The average member of the public isn't just going to keep watching no-budget movies looking for a diamond in the rough; they'll decide they don't like 'them' as if 'they' were a homogenous mass and go straight back to watching Hollywood product. There is nothing inherently interesting about making a 90 minute movie in HD for no money, because it's literally something that an eight year-old with a camera phone can do.

In the past, there were potential gems that never got made because the process was too difficult.

Now, they're getting made and nobody's actually watching them, because the process is too easy.

In a way, I think that's worse.

I got a bit obsessed about the idea of problems, and the repercussions they have on the filmmaking process. As a result, I did a talk about it called How Not to Make a Horror Movie at the Horror-on-Sea festival last month. It includes loads of cult filmmakers sharing their worst experiences. You can check it out below if you're interested.

]]>Samsung TV Listens to Users. We Have Lost the Wartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.66508542015-02-10T05:44:58-05:002015-04-12T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/Terminator 2. There was stuff blowing up, cool blue lighting, mechanical feet crushing the skulls of the defeated human race (for which the accompanying sound effect was actually the slowed-down sound of a nut being crushed, fact fans!). It looked like a proper conflict, a battle that would be waged. It looked like the humans would fight back, however tough the odds and however futile things looked. We'd show at least a glimmer of resistance rather than embracing our overlords.

Well, the battle was waged already, and we lost. We not only lost but we purchased our defeat willingly - giving up the things that made us human in exchange for not having to spend twenty seconds looking for the bastard remote control. This is the week that the culture of data collection reached another significant milestone, broke another taboo, with the privacy policy for Samsung's smart TV allowing the company and its partners to listen in to everything its users say.

You don't need me to point out the logical commercial extensions of TVs listening in to our living rooms and bedrooms. We're already acclimatised to the creepy targeting of internet ads via our search history, and the way that the search history is now no longer locked to a single PC (thanks to our Google and Facebook log-ins following us from machine to machine). How long before TV ads will be the same? Where the TV will respond to a muttered "This has never happened to me before" from the squeaking sofa by offering a deluge of Viagra ads? Or a comment about trying to get in shape with a never-ending landslide of ads for Weight Watchers? Or chocolate cake? Or both, alternating in a spectacular binge and purge cycle to keep the wheels of capitalism turning and the poor consumer locked in a tormenting holding pattern of self-loathing? As long as the poor sap keeps spending, who cares whether they are happy?

Not your telly. Your telly does not care whether you are happy. Nor the people or programs who will listen to the words spoken in front of your telly. They do not care whether you're happy either.

I'm not by any means technophobic, and used to be an early adopter. I wasn't always the most successful early adopter, (my family owned a BSB squarial, put it that way), but I enthusiastically embraced every new development that technology had to offer me. I also tried to keep a fairly open mind when more security-conscious friends expressed concerns about a few breakthroughs along the way. I remember the first time I read an article saying that mobiles might, just might, possibly, maybe, under extreme circumstances only, be able to be used to pinpoint an individual's location. There were a few dissenting voices in the tech community back then, swearing that they'd never buy a phone that allowed such a thing. Pointing out that the increased functionality of the new generation of phones wasn't enough of a bribe to make up for the theoretical loss of privacy. I probably shook my head and tutted. Oh, you poor paranoid fools. Of course the new functionality is enough to make up for the loss of privacy. Google Maps is awesome.

I feel like sending the 'paranoid' naysayers an apology note, and asking if it's too late to join their gang. Retro phones are cool anyway. A line needs to be drawn, and I'm drawing it at Samsung's creepy-assed TV. Seriously, Samsung? I always assumed that breakthroughs in evil were generally made by cool companies that people actually liked. People let aspirational brands off a whole bunch of evil shit, because of their gorgeous design and customer friendly usability. I associate Samsung with a slight tone of disappointment, like a schoolboy uttering "Hey, I got a new stereo. It's a Samsung, but it's still pretty cool"

I will not buy a TV that listens to me. I will not buy a TV that reports the most private moments in my life to a cloud, to be dissected or stored. We've lost the war, and fundamental concepts of privacy and basic humanity from a couple of decades ago are just dust in the wind.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to invite my new robot overlords to sit in my living room and listen to me bitching endlessly about it.]]>"Horror For Kids" and the Poltergeist Remaketag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.65701042015-01-29T08:35:42-05:002015-03-31T05:59:01-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/Poltergeist remake (in which he stars) as "more of a kids' movie". This got me thinking about a few things; specifically whether or not the original Tobe Hooper flick could be considered to be a "kids' movie" too.

That original film was rated PG by the MPAA on original release in the USA, but slapped with an X by the BBFC when it came out in the UK (nowadays it's a 15). Clearly, those two classification bodies couldn't quite decide what they were dealing with either. Was this a family-level film with some scary bits, or a full-tilt horror flick from which children should be protected at all costs? In 1982, the MPAA didn't have the option of a PG-13 rating as a middle option, but the BBFC did have the AA (which barred anyone under 14) but opted instead to go for the X (barring anyone under 18).

Aside from the actual content of the movie (the face-ripping scene still seems remarkably strong meat for any kind of PG rating, although I guess Raiders of the Lost Ark had melting faces and exploding heads in the same year, and that secured PG on both sides of the pond), I think there's another interesting point about what is considered 'age appropriate' at the heart of Poltergeist. Specifically, that it clearly is 'for kids' in the sense that the scares within it are specifically designed to freak out the young.

A while back, I was asked by a horror fan who had never seen the movie whether it would live up to his expectations. I was about to answer an enthusiastic 'yes' when I paused; all of my experiences of Poltergeist are filtered through having first seen it in my early teens. Poltergeist taps into the fears of a child rather beautifully. It sums up the unknown terrors of the thing under the bed or the scary shadow outside the window better than any other flick I can think of. Approaching it for the very first time as an adult, having left those kind of fears behind and moved onto more tangible concerns, I suspect that it might underwhelm.

The same thing works in reverse for The Exorcist. I know that the last time it was re-released at cinemas, there were certainly a considerable number of teens and young adults guffawing at the screen and generally screwing up the experience for everyone. It would be tempting to write this off as whistling past the graveyard; as the behaviour of young people very enthusiastically showing off how scared they weren't in order to look tough. There's probably a bit of that, true, but I think there's something else too. For a teenager, The Exorcist simply isn't a particularly scary movie. The horrors of the movie are pitched squarely at the fears of the parent not the child, and as those under 25 are notoriously bad at empathy (for various interesting biological and evolutionary reasons that I won't go into here) they're likely to come out of it pretty unscathed. Show the flick to a 40 year old with a kid approaching puberty, however, and I think you'd fairly quickly kill the idea that the flick has lost all its power over the years.

So, why do we protect kids from movies that are concerned with things unlikely to scare them in the first place, yet often show them movies that are specifically designed to scare them shitless? Granted, I'm over-simplifying the issue (there's certainly content in The Exorcist that you might rather that little Timmy didn't see for reasons other than whether it might scare him or not) but we do certainly seem to be happier exposing kids to terrors that are specifically designed to resonate with them than those that aren't.

On a similar front, the director of the recent Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death has criticised the BBFC for giving that flick a 15 rather than the 12a that was granted to its predecessor. Granted, that 12a made the first movie the most complained about movie of 2012, so you can hardly be surprised at the BBFC for perhaps being a little cautious with the Radcliffe-free sequel. I haven't seen that flick yet, so don't feel qualified to comment, but some of the poster imagery certainly seems to be playing the 'scare the crap out of the kids' angle to the max.

I'm sure we'll get to dance this dance once again when that pesky Poltergeist remake actually hits cinemas, of course. It's one thing to make a film aimed at kids, but its quite another to get a certificate that lets them watch it.]]>I Demand Less Choice!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.63018142014-12-10T10:53:52-05:002015-02-09T05:59:01-05:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
I had a routine about trying to buy condoms in an American supermarket, and being confronted by so much choice that it became impossible to actually make a selection. Having to consider every possible colour, size, shape, flavour and texture, and how those choices might reflect on me as a person, was simply too much for me to bear when making a simple retail choice. The punchline involved giving up and using an empty crisp packet instead.

Don't judge me.

Thing was, back in 2001 or whenever, the idea of too much choice was an oddity. My eye-wateringly hilarious observations about American supermarkets were highlighting an unusual anomoly in a world where we were used to our choices being limited. That world no longer exists. If I sit down in front of my TV tonight, how many things can I choose between for my viewing pleasure? Given that my TV can connect to the internet, as well as other sources of content, my choices are pretty much limited to ANYTHING THAT HAS EVER EXISTED EVER.

Same deal with music, of course. I succumbed to the temptation to upload my entire music collection to Google Play, and now I can access the everything I've ever owned without the terrible inconvenience of lugging my iPod around. That ain't the end of it, of course, because between Deezer and Spotify and YouTube, I can pretty much access everything I don't own as well.

So shouldn't all this choice mean I'm watching and listening to a broader range of stuff? Finding new movie genres and cool new bands to get into?

Well, personally I've found that I'm getting more conservative. I'm actually consuming less varied media than I did when I had limits on my choice, largely because having limits used to force me to watch stuff that I was only borderline interested in. It forced me to give things a chance, but increasingly I'm finding that I'm watching stuff that fits a fairly limited window of things I actively expect to enjoy. This means that my patterns of consumption get more and more defined, and my experience of wider culture gets more limited, with every passing year.

All those crappy mainstream shows that I used to profess to hate but yet somehow ended up seeing nonetheless? I genuinely don't see them anymore. Why would I? I can access loads of things that I think that I'm likely to enjoy more, so why should I watch something that doesn't fit my self-image? I can access a million songs that I think are great, so why the hell should I listed to one I hate? Or one I dislike? Or one I might dislike? Or one that I might like a little bit less than the one I really like?

Why should I give anything a chance?

I really miss having no choice. There's a real frisson to those moments when you lose the remote control under the sofa, or the wi-fi network packs up. You might have to watch something you don't like, or even something that you have no opinion about yet. Losing the remote is a scary rollercoaster of possibilities.

Possibilities that only seem to be opened up by taking other possibilities away.

I miss the sheer lack of choice that was presented by the cassette Walkman. You used to have to commit to an album (or compilation) at the point you left the house. What kind of freak would carry around a dozen spare tapes to listen to? Sometimes the tape you selected wasn't the easiest option. Sometimes you'd go for the difficult fourth album by a band whose early work had been much more accessible, and you'd force yourself to listen to that bad boy all the way into town and back. You'd commit. Once you'd left the house, you and that album were just gonna have to learn to get along somehow. Particularly because the FM radio on your Walkman was busted.

Nowadays, that tricky fourth album never gets listened to past the third track. The temptation to listen to something else, something easier but less rewarding, becomes overpowering. That accessible second album gets put back into heavy rotation, and you never grow to love the weird little acoustic track at the end of the fourth.

Because you're just as painfully limited by having too much goddamn choice as I am.]]>'Sex' Advice and Paddington Beartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.61807902014-11-18T16:32:13-05:002015-01-18T05:59:01-05:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
"BBFC changes Paddington 'sex' advice" rumbled the abbreviated version on the Entertainment page, expanding to the slightly more illuminating but still somewhat alarming "Paddington film: BBFC changes advice about 'sex references'" once you clicked through onto the link.

Once you've got past the headline (which is actually made even more entertaining by the picture of the bear himself looking a little bewildered underneath it - even if he seems to now resemble a hedgehog rather more than he did previously) the article itself explains how the BBFC originally listed 'mild sex references' in the parental advice for the new Paddington Bear movie, but now they've changed their minds and the bear-related filth is in fact merely 'innuendo'.

I love the idea that maybe, just maybe, the alleged sex references were an addition after an early table read. That the cast read through the script in full, doing all the cute animal voices and everything, right through to the no-doubt feelgood ending where that loveable bear learns an important lesson about life.

And that maybe, after the read-through was finished and just as the warm ripples of applause died away, one lone voice muttered "Yeah, but it's not very sexy, is it?"

In one of the strangest coincidences of all time, I had actually spent this very afternoon making weak jokes to a friend about how the new version of Paddington Bear was edgier, darker and, yes, sexier than previous versions. Turns out I was right. Actually, the full advice now reads "dangerous behaviour, mild threat, innuendo, infrequent mild bad language" which makes it sound like James Bond.

Sudden explosions of innuendo or unexpectedly grown-up bits in films aimed at kids can be vaguely disconcerting for the unsuspecting parent. Not offensive exactly, but jarring. The kids themselves just filter it out, of course; they're extremely literal creatures, and if they don't understand something, it doesn't exist in their universe. I badgered my poor parents into taking me to see Flash Gordon at least three times at the cinema when I was six, and it was only revisiting the movie a couple of decades later that I realised that, gosh, it really does have an awful lot of weird sex stuff in it. Seriously, go back and check it out. The subplot about Ming's sex potions isn't even the most awkward thing in it.

None of this, of course, is equal to the moment when the seagull tells the rabbit to 'piss off' in Watership Down. You know, the bit when entire families stopped munching their popcorn to stare in disbelief at the telly ("What did that seagull say, Mummy?")

Or, for that matter, the bit in E.T. when Elliott calls Michael 'penis breath'. I asked my Mum about that one, too (Jesus, it's a miracle that she kept taking me to the cinema, really) and she replied;

"I think he said peanut brain"

Which clearly demonstrates that my Mum is a quicker thinker than I shall ever be.

So Paddington has now joined the honourable line-up of movies which are aimed at kids, but have a near-the-knuckle line or two of dialogue thrown in just to wake the parents up. It's not a huge deal, and if it wasn't for the incongruity of including the words 'sex' and 'Paddington Bear' in the same headline, everyone (including me) would no doubt have just ignored it.

But are the tabloids going to resist the apparently irresistible 'Paddington Bare' headline? I seriously doubt it.

I barely managed it myself.]]>The Case of the Incredible Disappearing Princesstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.53151142014-05-13T09:24:02-04:002014-07-13T05:59:03-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
It was for an animated movie about a daring, unstoppable thief having a series of misadventures. Right at the end of the trailer, we glimpsed the female character who would presumably be his love interest.

Same old stuff, I guess. Such a large percentage of movies only seem to have a female character at all so that the male hero will have someone to snog in the last shot that it isn't really a surprise to see another one. Except that this trailer for a movie I didn't recognise was actually for a movie I've seen dozens of times (not necessarily through choice, although it's a decent flick).

It was for Disney's Tangled, the movie known throughout development as Rapunzel.

The trailer (which can be seen over here) was presumably part of the same process of de-Rapunzelling Rapunzel that led to the name change.

A friend suggested that the trailer's emphasis on the character of Flynn rather than Rapunzel (and, indeed, the increasingly developed male characterisations in recent Disney flicks) was part of a process to improve male representations in these movies rather than marginalise female ones, since the 'handsome prince' archetype has long been used in fairy-tale movies as little more than a third-act deus ex machina with good cheekbones. Me, though, I'd go so far as to say that portrayals of males in Disney cartoons don't matter in the slightest, because kids of both genders get a million other types of portrayals of 'lead character' masculinity to contextualise them against. Proper female leads, though? Not so much. Kids' movies that are "for everybody" like the Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs movies often don't even pass the Bechdel test, let alone present interesting, fully developed female characters who meaningfully interact with one another. Male leads are seen as the default, female leads the unusual oddity.

In such a climate, to devise a marketing campaign which obscures that rare example of a female lead (even if only in one version of the trailer; I've been told that there's a separate trailer featuring mainly just Rapunzel, but it certainly wasn't on the DVD where I saw the Flynn one) is doing our kids a disservice. The idea that a female protagonist has to be 'hidden' in order to attract male viewers is insane and inaccurate, but surprisingly widespread even when her name manages to remains in the title. Even the DVD cover for bloody Frozen places a male snowman, a male reindeer and the character of Christoff more prominently than either of the two sisters around whom the whole sodding film revolves.

I also can't help pondering the recent John Carter movie. The 2012 film was based on a novel called A Princess of Mars. The working title for the movie was John Carter of Mars, and ultimately it was released as just John Carter. The movie didn't perform very well critically or financially under this new 'masculine' identity, but is there any doubt that if the novel's title had been kept in place the failure of the flick would have been directly attributed to the 'female' title?

We're in a world where only 15% of movies have a female lead. If one of those 15% tanks, there seems to be an odd industry impulse to attempt to create a line of cause and effect - it tanked because it had a female lead - in a way that would be considered ridiculous for a male-orientated film. Although evidence suggest that films with decent female characterisations actually outperform male-heavy flicks the cinema in general (and the summer blockbuster season in particular) continues to be dominated by the same old male protagonists.

Disney princesses should not be the only kind of female lead character that kids can draw influence from; it gives them a totally inappropriate level of cultural weight. I'd have a lot less worries about the wide-eyed princess archetype if there were thousands and thousands of other prominent female lead archetypes for kids to respond to (in the way that there are for male characters), but if they're all we've got for the moment let's at least put them front and centre in the marketing.

Talk about two steps forward, three back. Cinderella and Snow White may have been piss-poor role models but at least they got to headline their own goddamn movies.]]>'Star Wars Episode VII' is Going to be Terrible - Or Awesometag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.52322482014-04-29T19:00:00-04:002014-06-29T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/ are in London shooting Star Wars Episode VII?

Pardon me while I split into two separate entities in order to examine my feelings about this.

Pat A: This is, obviously, absolutely brilliant news. As a child of the 70s, the idea of seeing Han Solo and Luke Skywalker back on the big screen is--

Pat B: Jesus, what's that on your face?

Pat A: What? Oh, I think it's some slime from the separation process.

Pat B: Well, it's disgusting.

Pat A: Sorry. I'll wipe it off. Anyway, the idea of seeing Solo and Skywalker back on the big screen is so exciting I can hardly breathe. It brings back all sorts of memories and fills me with such hope for the future of the franchise. JJ Abrams is a really solid choice for director, and every announcement I hear (like the decision to film on 35mm) just makes me feel happy and confident that this is--

Pat B: Exactly the kind of slavish and pointless fan service that you ranted against regarding theDoctor Who 50th anniversary a while back.

Pat A: No, this is different. This is about bringing someone back who has been away. This is Han bloody Solo.

Pat B: Every time I mention that movie, you recoil like you've just seen the hand out of the grave at the end of Carrie. And that was Indiana bloody Jones. Regardless of how it may be intellectually true that a bad sequel cannot hurt the originals, you know as well as I do that it isn't emotionally true. Sure, you might be able to enjoy a couple of hours in the company of Brody, Quint and Hooper without thinking about Jaws: The Revenge, but can you honestly tell me that the final two movies didn't change the way you think about The Matrix? It went from being a film you raved about to being a footnote in your cinematic history reading "Well, the first one was pretty good".

Pat B: Yeah, and since when was there anything remotely rational about being a movie fan? The Matrix sequels damaged your feelings about the original. Crystal Skull *did* hurt your perception of the character of Indiana Jones, and possibly damaged the character's legacy in the culture as a whole. There's a nice bit in the extended video review over at Red Letter Media where Plinkett argues that the reason we aren't happy seeing Indiana Jones as a much older dude because we never related to him as a fully-rounded character; we related to him as direct wish-fulfillment and nobody wishes to get old. It's an astute point and surely applies just as much to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker? Maybe even more so?

Pat A: Whatever. Look, the prequels had so many problems that nobody's likely to be walking into the cinema for Episode VII expecting perfection. Not in the way that we foolishly were back in 1999 when Phantom Menace came out, anyway. We just want to have some fun, and to see our old favourites back on-screen, and if you're that determined to find the bad side of this situation you really shouldn't call yourself a Star Wars fan. Ah, well, at least you didn't mention the JJ Abrams lens flare thing.

Pat B: I was saving that bit for the end.

Pat A: Aaaaaggghh!! Don't start me on that. It's the internet at its very, very worst. Look, if the internet had existed in Kubrick's heyday, you'd have had endless Comments Section Warriors banging on about his "overuse" of one-point perspective. If people take exception to a director having a visual trademark and act like angry villagers carrying burning torches every time it crops up, we'll end up with every movie that ever gets made looking exactly the goddamn same.

Pat B: And endless sequels and prequels to existing properties that don't need further expansion, rather than new and innovative movies.

Pat A: Exactl-- Oh, hang on. I see what you're doing there. To hell with this, I'm going to go and watch the movie with someone else who'll actually enjoy it for what it is, rather than pissing and moaning about what it isn't.

Pat A: They're making another Alvin? Man, that really winds me up. They should leave the classic trilogy alone. Some things should just be left as perfect memories.]]>How Not to Suck at Auditionstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.51451032014-04-14T05:28:15-04:002014-06-14T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
Auditions aren't my favourite part of the film business. There's a built-in imbalance to the process, and it's easy for either side to lose sight of what the experience is like for the other party in the room. For a tired producer or casting agent who has already lived and re-lived the same 12 minutes (with very minor alterations) over and over again since the crack of dawn, the process can be exhausting and frustrating. For a prospective cast member, building up your entire day to focus on your specific 12 minutes can lead to tension, second-guessing yourself and over-analysis.

I believe that both the person doing the auditioning and the person being auditioned to have a shared responsibility to make the process suck as little as possible for their counterpart. In the world of low-budget movies, (and, God knows, high-budget ones too), this sometimes gets forgotten.

Sod it, let's turn this into a game of advice-tennis.

Producers: Hire someone pleasant and professional to hold auditions, or at least as close to pleasant and professional as you can afford. Don't invite people to audition 'at your house' because it not only sounds massively dodgy but also suggests you have no organisational skills whatsoever. A room above a pub will do at a push, and you can probably get that for free if you ask around and get it during the day when nobody else is using it. Better than a room above a pub would be one of the business or function rooms in a hotel. If you go this route, though, for Christ's sake you make sure that you specify 'Function Room 1′ or whatever on the directions to your prospective cast. Asking them to audition 'at your hotel room' sounds even dodgier than 'at your house'.

Cast: Turn up on time. If you're not going to turn up on time, send a polite message as soon as you can letting the producers know. If you're not going to turn up AT ALL, let them know at least a day in advance. Weirdly enough, I can still remember the names of pretty much every actor who has completely failed to turn up for an audition and just left us sitting there, and not in a good way. A special note for one guy who failed to show in Summer 2007: if you're going to fail to turn up for an audition, and you're going to fail to notify the people sitting in the room waiting for you, please do NOT then send an excited email a couple of days later trying to plug the project that you decided to work on rather than attend the audition. Jesus.

Producers: Be absolutely upfront about everything. You might feel awkward telling people what crappy money you'll be paying them, but you need to do this BEFORE you expect people to drag themselves across town (or further) to attend an audition. If you're explaining how little you're going to pay when you're sitting face to face YOU HAVE LEFT IT TOO LATE. Likewise, if your script requires nudity, or being held underwater or licking live rats or whatever, (and there's no possibility of dropping these elements if your actor isn't up for them), then if you're telling them face to face YOU HAVE LEFT IT TOO LATE. If there's something that might absolutely rule out an actor's participation other than them being simply wrong for the role, you have a duty to try everything in your power to find that out before asking them to travel anywhere. That's your bare minimum.

Cast: If you've been given a script extract in advance, read it in advance. I know, I know. There ain't enough hours in the day for any of us. Personally, I wouldn't expect you to know an extract by heart, necessarily, (although some might), but I won't be expecting you to say 'I haven't had a chance to look at this, sorry' either. Oh, and if you're too hungover to audition properly I'm not sure it particularly matters whether you announce this fact or not. The phrase "I haven't slept for three days" also has no place in an audition unless it's part of the script extract.

Producers: Telling people they haven't got the role after they've auditioned sucks. Just because it sucks doesn't mean you don't have to do it. A prompt, courteous email is the bare minimum for people you've face-to-faced. A phone call can more problematic on both sides but is probably the better option for someone you've seen more than once (or led to believe they were a front-runner). Professionalism, courtesy and respect, folks.

Cast: Once you've had that email or call, that's the bit where you go away, I'm afraid. Sending endless emails at this point isn't a good look for anyone. Try not to over-analyse why you didn't get the part, either. The odds are that it was something someone else did incredibly right rather than anything you did wrong.

Everyone: Be nice. Be kind and friendly and professional. Remember that people's feelings are at stake as well as the movie. Being professional but pleasant is possibly almost as important as being right for the role. I can remember thinking "this person seems very talented, but seems like they might be a nightmare" quite often, and that factor has probably swung my decision more times than I care to admit. A set only works when everyone is pulling in the same direction, and if you're being openly rude to hotel staff at an audition then the odds are you won't be much more considerate to those around you on a set.

Usual Disclaimer: I'm not putting myself forward as some kind of guru or role model by saying this stuff. I also know that I've failed to follow my own advice on a few occasions (as the handful of people who have ended up auditioning at my house over the years will attest) but I put these ideas forward in the hope that we can keep the experience of auditioning as painless as possible for everyone concerned.

They've got an astonishingly tough job, and have to juggle the conflicting whims of politicians and the public whilst coping with regular bashings from the right wing press for being too lenient and the left wing press for being too censorial. They have to cope with changing technology and viewing patterns, and reinvent themselves fairly constantly to remain relevant in a changing landscape. They've come a long way from the dark days of the 90s (when those pressures led them to make some very shaky decisions indeed), and if it wasn't for the events of the last few days I'd probably be writing a fairly positive article about them. Other than the weird classification of Frozen (because if that's a PG then there's no earthly point in the U existing) I haven't had any argument with them for a long time.

Until this week, when they announced a potentially catastrophic change to their policy.

Not catastrophic to the big boys, of course. Not catastrophic to the Harry Potters or Star Treks of this world. As usual, shit rolls downhill towards the guys at the bottom.

In fact, this change of BBFC policy would probably be unnoticed by everybody except small independent distributors and the filmmakers whose films are distributed by them.

Filmmakers like me.

There's a really intelligent and well-written breakdown of what this change is and why it matters over at MovieMail. Basically, the BBFC are changing the rules regarding what material on a DVD release can be exempt from classification, meaning that documentary and behind-the-scenes footage will now incur substantial per-minute fees from which they were previously exempt. This is being put together under the aegis of protecting children from being exposed to rude music videos on DVD (and, seriously, when the hell was the last time a kid watched a music video for the first time on DVD? There's a thing called YouTube which I understand is very popular nowadays), but will have a serious impact for independent distributors who depend on substantial extras on the releases of minority interest DVDs to give them even the slightest chance of breaking even in a difficult marketplace.

An example, you say? Ok, then.

In 2006, I shot a movie called KillerKiller in a disused mental hospital in Essex. It's a spin on slasher movies, in which a group of incarcerated serial killers are picked off one by one by a demon that takes the form of traditional horror 'victims' (a cheerleader, a babysitter, a student and so on). It's a cool little movie that got released in most territories (we even got a short cinema release in Germany) after we signed all worldwide rights to a company in LA. For long and boring reasons the movie never came out in the UK, though, which was frustrating for a UK filmmaker. We got the rights back a little while ago, and shortly afterwards we signed the movie to awesome UK label Cine du Monde.

Now, Cine du Monde were aware that this movie had already been released all over the world except the UK, and that a big percentage of our niche target market might have already seen it through imports, festivals or torrents. To make up for this, we laid plans to put together a kick-ass special edition which would tempt the importers to double-dip. In addition to a Director's Cut re-edit of the film itself, we put together a great big list of extras including, among other things, an hour-long fly-on-the-wall documentary covering the shoot itself and a 62 minute film of a talk I gave at the Horror on Sea festival last year about independent filmmaking.

Here's the talk we intended to include. It's got some clips from KillerKiller that are NSFW (partial nudity and violence) and a bit of swearing - but let's not forget that this would have been included on a DVD where the entirety of KillerKiller itself would already have been rated.

And here lies the problem.

I'm pretty sure the movie will get an 18 when it goes through the BBFC (largely due to some particularly salty dialogue rather than the gore or nudity). It's not a long film, and the fee calculator suggests that the rating will cost about £645. Under the old guidelines, that would be it. Cine du Monde would be able to add the documentary and the talk from the film festival as exempt material, pay the BBFC their fee and get the disc out to our small but perfectly formed audience base.

Under the new guidelines, they'd apparently need to get the festival talk rated as well unless it only contained PG rated material (despite the disc overall presumably being an 18 already). And the fly-on-the-wall documentary too, with its moderate swearing. So, another 536 for the festival talk and 522 for the documentary. Throw in the other bits and bobs (including a 'look back' short and some video diaries) and we could be looking at overall BBFC charges of close to £2000 rather than £645 to get the whole special edition certified (and don't even start me on their policy regarding commentaries).

Thing is, this kind of small release has knife-edge economics in terms of breaking even. Cine du Monde would need to shift hundreds and hundreds more units to cover the additional charges, and I wouldn't blame them if they decided that the release just wasn't viable any more and ditched it. Releasing a vanilla version instead (with no extras) leaves absolutely no incentive whatsoever for the people who've already seen the movie to pick it up again; again, not the most enticing prospect for a distributor to release. Another of my films,The Devil's Music, is in exactly the same boat regarding extras, as is Al Ronald's awesome existential western Jesus vs The Messiah, which was finally due for release in 2014 after years and years as a bit of a lost movie

I delivered the hard drive full of KillerKiller master materials to Cine du Monde last month. This change of policy has totally sideswiped me; I've worked to get this damn movie out in my home country since 2007, and now it still might not happen due to what is either an ill-thought out but well-meaning piece of legislation or a cynical cash-grab that will be unnoticed by the majors but utterly screw over those who can least afford it.

The BBFC don't always get things right, and this is one of those occasions.

If you care about independent movies, make some noise before they shut us up forever.]]>(Don't Watch) The Most Terrifying Scene in Cinema Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.49105722014-03-06T08:01:44-05:002014-05-06T05:59:02-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/Ringu or the chest-burster in Alien have long since sacrificed their scare-factor on the altar of popular culture, remakes and over-familiarity.

With that in mind, and with the full understanding of just how seldom a genuinely terrifying moment in genre cinema comes along; there's a video on YouTube that I don't want you to watch.

You probably haven't seen it, even if you consider yourself quite a horror fan. It's from a film that remains difficult to track down, and was never very widely shown in the first place. In my opinion it's one of the truly great moments in horror cinema, and I don't want you to go and check it out under any circumstances. In fact, I'll be genuinely irritated if any of you do go and check it out as a result of reading this blog. Don't do it, kids.

I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.

The version of Scene X sitting on YouTube has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of prickwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.

As with so many truly terrifying moments, the reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't really because of the scene itself. The power comes from all those other scenes beforehand that aren't Scene X. All that careful set-up. After all, an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that context then you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen.

So, no, despite my urge to bring a really cool forgotten moment in horror history to wider attention, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is.

Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.

So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler. You might now never see it, but at least I won't have wrecked it for you.

My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.]]>Our Superheroes Are Getting Too Darktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.46308602014-02-21T19:00:00-05:002014-04-23T05:59:01-04:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/Please Note: This blog post contains spoilers for Man of Steel, and for the current run of Spider-Man comics in both US and UK (including recently publicised announcements about forthcoming issues). I point this out because I complained about spoilers in a post a while ago, so posting them without giving a heads up would officially make me a complete tool.

I don't have a problem with darkness.

I have a natural affinity with the spooky and the horrible. I have no beef against violence in entertainment, (just violence in real life as I have explained before), and I firmly believe that writers should be able to deliver the story they want to tell without any behind-the-scenes hand-wringing that it's all getting a bit nasty.

Except, apparently, when it comes to mainstream superheroes.

I think every kid develops something of their sense of right and wrong from the heroes they're presented with early in life. I was a child of the 70s, and I saw Superman on first release. In fact, I only got to see it because our local paper misprinted the certificate in the movie listings, leading my mum to take me to the cinema believing it was a U. It was, in fact, an A, (the predecessor of the current PG), but she didn't find that out until we'd already been queueing for an hour and the queue had finally shifted up sufficiently for us to reach the poster. At this point, she was faced with either abandoning her 'U ratings only' policy or dragging her screaming and uncomprehending son away from a movie that he'd just queued for an hour to watch.

That's how I saw my first A certificate and, like many kids, I guess I picked up something of what it means to be righteous from Christopher Reeve's beautifully judged performance as Clark Kent/Superman.

Despite this, and I ended up a Marvel boy rather than the DC one, particularly when it came to the character of Spider-Man. Something about the wall-crawler just connected with me, as it had done with generations before and continues to do with brand new ones (the character celebrated his 15th anniversary in 2012). A lot has been made of the fact that Peter Parker's mundane, everyday problems are often juxtaposed against his alter-ego's massive, world-in-peril problems, and that was certainly part of the appeal. The idea that a hero could be saving the world with a stinking head cold, or fighting a monster whilst worrying about paying a bill. The humanity in the face of the extreme.

So, if Superman is the eternal boy-scout with the strength of a god and Spider-Man the troubled everyman striving to comprehend incredible levels of responsibility, something remains in common with both; both are struggling to always do good, no matter what forces are pitted against them.

I mentioned at the top of the post that spoilers follow. Well, here they come, the plot-wrecking bastards. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In the comics at the moment, Peter Parker is dead. Spider-Man is Otto Octavius, the former Dr Octopus, in Peter Parker's stolen body. He's an arrogant asshole who attempts to be a superhero but sometimes ends up killing people. It's terrific fun to read, and from a narrative point of view it's a flat-out genius move. Comics, like sitcoms, move in cycles where the status quo is changed only to be eventually restored. The average lapsed Spider-Man reader dropping back into the comics would expect the comfort-blanket of consistency, not Doctor Octopus as Spider-Man.

Superman, on the other hand, went and snapped Zod's neck at the end of last year's Man of Steel movie. He snapped the dude's neck. Not very boy-scout. There isn't a 'snapping a dude's neck' merit badge. I don't think there's even one for minor throttling.

Both of these might be considered brilliant devices for jolting complacent audiences out of their iPhone stupors. In the case of Spider-Man, writer Dan Slott reinvigorated the rinse/cycle/repeat structure and made a 50-year-old comic book a must read again for an awful lot of people. In the case of Man of Steel, it at least signified a significant enough change of direction to coax viewers to sit through yet another load of cornfields in yet another bloody origin story, having already had ten years worth of that on Smallville.

But. But. But.

The universe will not rest easy until the status quo is re-established. The story broke last month that, in Spider-Man's case, this is going to happen sooner rather than later, because there's a new Spidey movie out this year, and Marvel would have been daft to have so much potential new readers try out their first Spider-Man comic as a result of the movie and then be confronted by such an alienating central character. If the movie hadn't come along, though, I'm not sure how long the storyline would have run for; a year is an eternity to a kid, and as they had the balls to run it for that long, who's to say it couldn't have run longer?

The thing is, when I saw that news story I practically whooped. Because as much as I love the darkness, I apparently want to keep it away from my superheroes. The darkness in the Superior Spider-Man arc has meant that I've been quietly hiding the comics rather than encouraging my kids to flick through them as I used to. The darkness in Man of Steel means that those same kids will grow up with the Reeve movies rather than the Cavill ones, which is probably cooler anyway.

Goddammit, I like my mainstream superheroes to be the light-bulb not the power-cut.

Oh, except Batman, of course. Darkness is where that dude lives.]]>Goodbye, Blockbustertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.44329082013-12-12T11:18:46-05:002014-02-11T05:59:02-05:00Pat Higginshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-higgins/
The chain had only just taken over the store when I joined. Previously it had been a Ritz Video, and the takeover had meant all of those thousands of distinctive yellow VHS sleeves had been replaced with blue and white ones.

It could be argued that many jobs are little loops of routine presented with very minor variations on a daily basis until you are fired, quit or die. From the store opening rituals to the store closing rituals and everything in between, things that started out unfamiliar soon became comfortable and ultimately became depressingly routine. I can still picture every shelf, and could have a pretty good stab at telling you where the majority of individual titles were located upon them.

After I'd been there a few months, an edict came down from head office that all branches were to play a single 45 minute trailer tape, presented by Ulrika Jonsson, on a loop throughout business hours. This is the sort of thing that doubtless sounds wonderful in a board room but can have a calamitous effect on the sanity and well-being of staff. At least Bill Murray had a whole day to play around with in Groundhog Day. My life loop only lasted 45 minutes. I kept a cassette of music labelled 'The Jonsson Solution' tucked under the counter, and would play it over the shop's PA system (Against store policy! Rebel! Rebel! Smash the system!) whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. To this day I associate the first song on that tape (Ever Fallen In Love... (With Someone You Shouldn't've) by Buzzcocks) with sweet, sweet relief from Jonsson's voice.

One day, I got a call from a 'regional' manager which I remember vividly to this day. He told me that the quarter's takings across his stores hadn't met targets. The store that I worked at had met them, but some stores in the middle of nowhere were dragging his average down and he wanted a quick boost of profit over the next week.

His instructions run thusly;

1) Tape up the 24 hour drop box with industrial tape, and put a sign reading 'Drop box out of order; please return films to counter' on it.
2) Whitewash out all of the windows in the store and write 'Massive Sale Now On!' in the whitewash.
3) Sit back and watch the cash roll in.

His logic about the dropbox ran thusly;

1) If a customer is forced to walk into the shop, they might buy something.
2) If a customer can't return a video in the middle of the night, they'll come back tomorrow and buy something.
3) They might not be able to come back tomorrow, and will thus accrue profitable late fees.

His logic about the whitewash/sale ran thusly;

1) Everyone loves a sale! Whitewashing the windows will increase the curiosity factor!
2) Once inside the shop, they'll forget why they came in and won't notice that there isn't a sale. They might buy something.

My objections were varied and manifold. A small selection might include;

1) People will notice that a sale doesn't exist.
2) No, honestly, they will.
3) They'll ask what's on sale. I will reply 'The usual fine selection of goods'
4) They might, at this point, stab me. I wouldn't entirely blame them.
5) How can a hole in the bastard wall be 'out of order'?
6) A customer who has accrued a late fee because we've removed his means of returning his video will refuse to pay it.
7) A customer who has travelled all the way to the store in the middle of the night to find that we've removed his means of returning his video will simply post the video forcefully through the letterbox instead.
8) A videotape being pushed through the letterbox with sufficient force will set off the motion detectors and summon the police.
7) The police will contact the keyholder to come out in the middle of the night to turn the goddamn burglar alarm off.
8) The keyholder is me. I hate you beyond my ability to express myself.

I should probably point out that these requests came solely from one rogue regional manager, and I'm sure were in no way representative of activities across the chain as a whole nearly 20 years ago. This was little consolation at the time, as it was my regional manager. I kept myself cheerful by writing.

I wrote the first odd little fragments of what would eventually become the screenplay for my first film TrashHouse whilst standing in that video shop, although those fragments wouldn't end up gelling into any sort of coherent whole for six years or so. I can clearly remember writing 'It's raining. A girl in a red cloak walks up a hill towards a dark house' on a notepad beside the cash register, and that became the opening scene of the movie.

Except the hill.

And the cloak.

And the rain.

And it wasn't quite the opening scene, because we had to add a pre-credits sequence to get some gore in nice and early.

But there was definitely a girl and a house, so the point remains valid.

I quit Blockbuster at one point, then somehow ended up getting rehired a few months later when I was desperate for money. I can remember that first shift back, standing behind the same counter, looking at the same shelves, thinking "God, I'm never going to get out of here".

On 20th February 2006, despite having been shot on a shoestring, TrashHouse was widely released on DVD across the UK. I went for a long walk that day and spent a lot of time thinking. In the early afternoon, I found myself in that same branch of Blockbuster. I hadn't been there for a few years, even as a customer, (I'd moved house a couple of times and it was no longer my closest branch), but I walked in and saw my movie on the shelf.

It was, actually, the first time I'd seen one of my films on a shelf anywhere. Available to the public.

Available to rent in the shop where I'd stood for thousands upon thousands of hours, dreaming of making films but worrying in my heart of hearts that I'd never get to do it.

If I get ten moments as good as that in my whole life, I've got nothing to complain about.

So, goodbye Blockbuster. Seeing the empty shell of a shop last weekend felt like a genuine punch in the gut. Another iconic brand gone from the high street, another facet of the film experience consigned to history.

And where the hell are the filmmakers of tomorrow going to waste their early 20s working now?]]>